Abstract:
The many dimensions of "open" provides users with higher quality geospatial information. Open Standards ensures interoperability to information whether its served by proprietary or open source software. Open Source software benefits the development of open standards and leads to a business ecosystem that includes more providers, more partnerships and more customers.[1] In the end the user does not care if the code is open or proprietary. Users care about access to data and the quality of the data. Open Data has advanced with the recent policies from GEOSS Data-CORE [2] and the US Open Government Initiative [3]. Open Earth Observation data from government sources benefits industry and users. Open standards, Open source and Open data can result in higher quality information. The fusion of data from multiple sources results in higher quality. Fusion is possible based on multiple data sources that can be interrelated [4]. Improving Data Quality through knowing the uncertainty and the provenance of derived information is dependent upon an open landscape of geospatial information.